Freedom From The Law…

(Galatians 3:1-25)…It amazes me how even today churches fail in the same areas as the early churches. Paul was always bringing to light the missteps of those early churches. Here the church in Galatia was trying teach that people had to follow the Law if they were to be believers in Christ. Paul explained that if you try to live by the Law then you will be condemned. The Law was given prior to Christ’s coming, and even Christ preached that we have all fallen short of the Law. Christ came to save us from the Law. Actually, the Law points us to our need for salvation, our need for Christ’s sacrifice. If there was no Law it would be harder to see our need for salvation.

You might wonder about all those people that lived before Christ’s coming. Was there no salvation or them? Actually we know that God gave the promise of a coming Messiah a long time prior. Those before had the opportunity to believe in the coming salvation, as they too saw their need for freedom from the bondage of the Law. When God gave us the Law He knew we could not live up to it, but he already had the coming of Christ and a way for salvation planned out.

I think it is easy as Christians to get the lines blurred between living under the Law and living under the salvation given to us from Christ. If we are truly going to be followers of Christ, then we need to live as He did, we need to follow His example. I think it is so easy for us to limit our own ability to fully follow Christ’s example because our own selfishness gets the better of us. My desire is to live my life as a true follower of Christ. In one way, He gave us the most important command was to love each other as ourselves. This is a harder calling than we might want to admit. I know there are many times I come into contact with people that are hard to love. Christ calls me to love them anyways. This is the challenge I see before me.

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Tim Nolte

A Christ-follower, husband, father, and Applications Developer with Sprint.